Leadership training course – Spring 2025

A 6-week training course for university leaders working in student recruitment, widening participation, school liaison, or outreach roles.

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Every Friday from 28 February to 4 April 2025

10am to 11:30am (online)

Online for the first 5 weeks, with a full-day in-person finale in Birmingham on Friday 4 April from 9.30am

£900 + VAT

10 spaces

Do you lead student recruitment, schools liaison, widening participation, or outreach activity?

This new leadership training course will help you grow your knowledge, network, and confidence to allow you to succeed in your role.

It is designed for:

  • Experienced managers hoping to move into a Head role
  • New leaders who have recently been promoted into a Head role
  • Established leaders looking to renew their skillset for their Head role.

Leadership is a lot, but this carefully curated training course will help you survive, thrive, lead, and succeed in your university role and beyond.

Dates and times

This leadership course will take place every Friday over a 6-week period between 28 February and 4 April.

Weeks 1 to 5 will take place online between 10am and 11.30am on Teams.

Week 6 will take place in person in Birmingham between 9.30am and 4pm. This is a celebratory finale, allowing all participants to gather for a final day of learning and socialising.

Meetings won’t be recorded to allow participants to feel fully comfortable when sharing personal stories and sensitive challenges about their leadership journey.

Our approach

This leadership course is intimate and interactive, with a high level of group discussion. For this reason, there are only 10 spaces available.

There won’t be any slide presentations. Instead, we will facilitate learning through peer-to-peer networking, access to senior leaders, sharing (and solving) challenges, ongoing self-reflection, and takeaway tasks.

Our format

Week 1 will bring all participants together, without a guest speaker. It is an introduction, a safe space, where we will each share our career journeys, leadership challenges, and expectations for the weeks ahead.

Weeks 2 to 5 will each focus on a different leadership topic, with insights from a guest senior university leader experienced in student recruitment, widening participation, and outreach activity. These weeks will be structured as follows:

  • 10am - participants share their leadership experiences from the past week
  • 10.15am - guest speaker introduces themselves, their journey, and their topic
  • 10.30am - participants are invited to question the guest speaker and seek advice
  • 11.00am - guest speaker departs, allowing participants to share their reflections
  • 11.20am - participants set their intentions for the week ahead
  • 11.30am - end of meeting.

Week 6 is a full day in Birmingham, with guest speakers, followed by a celebratory lunch and a social activity. All activities are included in the cost of the leadership programme, with the exception of your travel to and from Birmingham.

Our programme

In this first week, you will meet your fellow participants and leaders. It is an opportunity to begin building relationships with people who will support you throughout the course, and potentially the years ahead too.

We’ll discuss expectations for the course, share our leadership origin stories, and reflect on the leadership challenges we wish to overcome.

This first week will end with the launch of the optional course WhatsApp group where you can seek connection, camaraderie, and counsel in between the weekly sessions.

Imposter syndrome is a common barrier to effective leadership. New and experienced leaders alike will frequently feel out-of-place and out-of-depth during trying moments throughout their career. How do we overcome that niggling, naysaying voice?

Our guest speaker will help us (re)discover our confidence with insights from their own leadership journey. We’ll explore proven methods for silencing our doubts, practicing positivity, and recognising our abilities, so we can operate as strong, resilient leaders.

A curious challenge of leadership is finding yourself managing managers. As you move from an operational role to a strategic role, you will likely have managers reporting to you, each with their own vast skillsets and teams to lead.

Our guest speaker will offer advice on this complex dynamic. They will help you achieve the fine balance between being hands-on and hands-off with your staff. You will learn how to give your managers the freedom to find their own authority, and when to intervene.

As a leader, you will become more visible throughout your university, especially with more senior colleagues. This newfound visibility requires credibility, so your directors, chiefs, and executive board feel reassured by your plans, priorities, and presence.

Our guest speaker will offer insights to help you lead your leaders. You’ll discover how to empathise with their challenges, undertake strategic alignment exercises to support your goals, and gain their buy-in for your projects through proposal-writing and reporting.

Decision-making is a critical responsibility in any leadership role. You will need to make (and sometimes unmake) decisions that affect colleagues, budgets, and workloads. In an age of data overload, how do you choose and champion the best way forward?

Our guest speaker will explain how to gather insights from multiple sources when faced with a difficult decision, and when to rely on data, experience, and instinct. They will also advise on how best to communicate change, defend decisions, and monitor their impact.

The most successful leaders in the world are those who have a ground-breaking vision, a disruptive idea, an inventive solution. However, creative thinking is often seen as a risk in the education sector. How can you pioneer innovation in a university environment?

Our final guest speaker will help you find ways to bring your imagination into the workplace. They will offer guidance on steering your ingenious plans through traditional channels, and the balance of thinking outside the box, whilst staying inside the boxset.

Your guest speakers

Each guest speaker will be a university professional with experience as a director in student recruitment, widening participation, and outreach. Our dream team of directors includes the following wise, warm, and welcoming people. We feel very lucky to have them onboard.

Martyn Edwards

Director of External Relations, University of Leicester

Prior to joining Leicester, Martyn has held a number of senior roles across different organisations within the HE sector, including the British Council, University of Nottingham, and IDP Education. More recently, he was Director of Marketing and Advancement at Loughborough University.

Martyn is a graduate of Cardiff University with a bachelor’s degree in English and a master’s degree in Strategic Marketing. He also holds a postgraduate qualification from the University of Manchester. He is a former Vice-Chair of the British Universities International Liaison Association (BUILA) and of the Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM) Higher Education Special Interest Group.

Martyn is a former member of the IDP Connect International Advisory Panel and currently sits on the Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) Global Advisory Committee, Keystone Education Group International Advisory Board, Duolingo English Test UK Advisory Group, and the Council for Europe of the Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE).

Lorraine Westwood

Interim Associate Director UK Student Recruitment, Middlesex University

Lorraine has worked in the higher education sector at Director or Chief Officer level for over 25 years. Her portfolios have included UK and international student recruitment, widening participation, marketing, communications, admissions, alumni, and development. Her institutional experience is also broad: Birmingham City, Manchester Metropolitan, Harper Adams, Keele, and Bangor.

As a senior leader, Lorraine has had to develop key skills and strengths in building strong, resilient, and high performing teams. This is evidenced by her record of sector recognition, including being awarded the title of Marketer of the Year by the Chartered Institute of Marketing in 2019.

Last year, Lorraine moved into consultancy and interim work enabling her to focus on areas of particular interest, supporting institutions with particular challenges or priorities. At the same time, she continues to mentor and support managers in the education sector as a mentor, coach, and critical friend.

Kenon Man

Director of Marketing and Student Recruitment, Imperial College London

Kenon is the Director of Marketing and Student Recruitment at Imperial College London. Prior to this, he has held digital and recruitment roles at the University of Nottingham and Swansea University. He has a keen interest in all things digital and content marketing, and how digital tools impacts on organisational culture and behaviour.

As a music graduate, Kenon has previously worked in the Arts sector where he was involved in widening participation arts projects and outreach work to help diversify participation in the arts.

Born and raised in the Welsh Valleys, Kenon is 1st generation Chinese and was involved in the Race Equality Charter assessment team at Swansea University. Kenon was also the inaugural recipient of the CASE Europe Emerging Marketing and Communication Professional Award.

Rebecca Trengrove

Consulting Fellow, Halpin

Rebecca is an experienced executive director, consultant, board advisor, committee member, and chair. She has worked at senior leadership level in the public sector, private companies (including start-ups), public companies (both FTSE100 and AIM-listed) and membership organisations.

Rebecca has particular expertise in higher education, where her approach to strategic student recruitment brought in tens of millions of pounds of additional revenue that materially improved the financial position of the University of Dundee. She knows how universities work and is experienced in gaining influence with academic and professional services colleagues, PVCs, and VCs.

Nicola Anderton

Director of Digital and Marketing, University of Nottingham, 2017-2024

Nicola is a former Director of Digital and Marketing at the University of Nottingham with extensive experience in higher education. As a recognised innovator, she is the award-winning creator of the world's first Micro Prospectus.

Nicola has a proven track record of success in leading high-performing marketing teams, driving digital transformation, and building strong brands. She brings a unique blend of strategic vision, creative leadership, and analytical skills to every project.

Nicola began her marketing career in publishing. She moved to the higher education sector in 2004. She has since worked across Russell Group, post-92, Oxbridge, and private higher education providers.

Dates and times

The cost for the course is £900 + VAT.

This includes:

  • Weeks 1 to 5 of online leadership training, including guest speakers
  • The Week 6 finale in Birmingham, including guest speakers, a celebratory lunch, and a social activity
  • Access to an exclusive WhatsApp group featuring all participants to share insights, stories, and challenges between our meetings
  • Takeaway tasks, tools, and templates to build on discussions
  • A UniTasterDays journal to support self-reflection throughout.

Your facilitator

Simon Fairbanks

Head of Community Engagement at UniTasterDays

Simon has approaching 20 years of experience in the higher education sector. This includes student recruitment, marketing, and events roles at four different universities in the UK: Nottingham, Birmingham, Warwick, and Coventry.

Simon has also worked at Pickle Jar Communications, a content strategy consultancy for the international education sector. He helped schools, colleges, and universities share their stories through digital communications.

Simon is an international speaker. He has spoken at a variety of conferences, including CASE, ContentEd, EFMD, IDPE, FindAUniversity, HELOA, HighEdWeb, PSEWeb, SU Digital, SU Marketing Conference, and Utterly Content. He was Chair of the Newcomers Track at CASE Europe Annual Conference from 2020 to 2023.

As a published author, Simon is particularly interested in storytelling in the education sector. He spends his free time reading, writing, running, and finding new ways to make his children laugh.

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